January 7
Yesterday, they had a chef at the dining hall who would make omelets for you while you waited. I probably shouldn't have, but he asked me when I came in if I wanted one, and he was so nice I couldn't say no. He put lots of vegetables in it, and a little bit of cheese. And it was really tasty.
I regretted it when I was exercising this morning, though. It slowed me down. I think that maybe I should try to exercise before I eat, or else eat a smaller meal in the morning.
Until I'm sure where I'm allowed to fly, I'm keeping my hooves on the ground whenever I'm not in the central part of campus. Well, mostly. Surely short glides, no more than a pony-height above the ground are okay.
There is a nice neighborhood around the college where I can trot around and get my exercise. I've already met one nice man who trots—but humans call it jogging—in the morning as well. Also there is a lady who walks her dog. It's a very friendly dog; she says it's a veeshla.
We're still covering basic stuff in climate class. A lot of the other students are asking really dumb questions that they should have learned years ago. Maybe that's not fair because humans can't fly without machines, so they probably don't understand the atmosphere like I do. It's sort of frustrating, though, because it's foal's stuff.
But—I have to pay close attention, because the human names for clouds are very different. Some of them are very poetic, like stratocumulus.
Also humans sometimes make cirrus clouds with airplanes. The professor said that airplanes make contrails which turn into cirrus clouds. I wasn't sure why they wanted to make them with airplanes when there are more useful clouds that can be made, unless they didn't know how.
I wonder if the airplane I flew in made cirrus clouds? I wasn't looking out the back of it.
I heard one of the students in back say that cirrus clouds were also called 'mare's tails.' I thought that was a nice name for them, too.
In my philosophy class, we learned about how Socrates invented the scientific method, which is where you take a big problem and break it down into little parts, then investigate each of those little parts until you get the answer that you want. The professor said that that was one of Socrates' most important ideas, and I thought that made him pretty smart, but it turned out he chose to drink hemlock when it was given to him, which wasn't very smart at all, because hemlock is poisonous to humans too.
At lunch, I was still a little curious about that, and Aric, who also sometimes eats lunch with me now, said that people didn't always like new ideas and that was why Socrates had to drink hemlock. He also said that I ought to read a made-up story about Socrates called Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another. He has a copy, and he's going to loan it to me tonight.
The students in Equestrian class did better today. The professor decided that it would be good practice for me to tell them about my dormitory room here on campus. I thought that was kind of boring since they're all pretty much the same, but then she told me that it was something that they could all picture easily, and that made sense. I hadn't thought of it that way.
It's not that interesting a room. There is a closet by the front door, and the walls are big bricks like in the transfer station. The floor is hard tile which is somewhat slippery underhoof, and the ceiling is also called tile, but it's much softer. It sits in little tracks and if I fly up too high I can knock it out by mistake and have to put it back where it belongs.
Both Peggy and I have dressers and beds and desks and a chair for our desks. We each have our own computer, and she has big pictures on her side of the room. I don't have any. I should ask her where she got them. It would liven up my side if I had some.
She also has a little electric icebox and a coffee maker.
There is a bathroom with a shower right next to our room, which is very convenient.
The other students live in similar rooms, but they are arranged differently. Some of them have a door right to the bathroom, which would be even more convenient, and some of them are called 'suites,' and they have several rooms which share a common room and a bathroom.
Before I went to dinner, I discovered that I had a letter on my computer from Mister Salvatore. He apologized for getting upset yesterday while we were talking to the man from the FAA, but he had thought that things were all taken care of, and then after the recent incident in France they had changed the rules but not told him about it.
For dinner, there was a special selection which they called Italian. It was mostly noodles and sauces. Christine said that they tried to be multi-cultural with dinner but sometimes they didn't do very well. I asked if they were going to have an Equestrian dinner, and Dan—who's short for a human—said that he hoped not, since humans couldn't eat hay. I don't know if he was joking or not, but I hadn't seen any hay with the salads yet so he was probably telling the truth.
Aric gave me the story about Socrates, and I told him that I probably wouldn't be able to read it for a day or two, because I needed to write a letter to Aquamarine and also read through more of the FAA book, as well as my regular coursework, and he said that that was okay.
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Yes, I'm aware it's supposed to be spelled Vizsla.
s3.amazonaws.com/assets.prod.vetstreet.com/f1/203760a80811e0a0d50050568d634f/file/Vizsla-1-645mk062911.jpg
after the recent incident in France
Close call or tragedy?
6994470
Close call.
6994023
Hey no problem. I like to read it on the phone while I drop a deuce. Those enchiladas man...
I am surprised that when studying for the exchange program the fact that we cannot control our weather was covered. I mean our ability to get the weather 3 days out is decent but Equestria has it down far better. Hopefully the surprise is an eureka moment for Silver Glow.
6994117
In that case, I'll just keep this story in my Read Later, and wait until you've finished; although, only
if you do indeed change the dated chapters thing. I mostly don't like those due to lack of character interaction, y'know since it's a journal. But hey, if you change it, I'll definitely do what I just said I would.
Interestin', once again.^^
a letter, sweetie.
Also, I kind of want to hear the pony terminology for the different kinds of clouds. Always eager to assimilate other's headcanon for future stories!
6994142
Well, in the show the pegasus ponies crash into rocks and walls and they're completely fine. Flying ponies are shown to be fast, because they look on it as a viable means of long distance transport. So, they must be incredibly resilient, because magic.
What happens to the aircraft depends on how magic makes them resilient. If they absorb the shock through deforming way beyond normal limits without injuring themselves, then aircraft will be knocked off course and probably suffer a little damage.
If they survive the shock by bouncing inelastically off of things, and not suffering damage because they're stronger than iron, they'll go through the aircraft like a cannon ball and it would be destroyed completely. Aircraft are terrible at taking hits from solid objects.
I guess the truth would be somewhere in between, because they do have bones so they can't really bend like silly putty and completely spread out the shock to themselves and the aircraft.
If they magically weigh almost nothing, then I guess the collision would be mostly harmless on both sides. Except the pony would be knocked and fly away like a baseball.
pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw344_131199900845.jpg
6994627
What is it that appeals it to you?
6994613
The incident was likely to do with propeller blades of a hobby plane or news helicopter, assuming a pegasus was involved; a pony would not have trained themselves to fear invisible death from a discolored patch of atmosphere near a machine, so in spite of instructions otherwise a pegasus or floating unicorn straying too close to the propellers/turbines would have invited dangerous evasive maneuvers by the pilots and mouth-frothing panic on the ground.
Alternatively, the incident was a legal one that threw the existing rules out for review, forcing our pony to be squeezed into pre-contact aeronautic legislation as a temporary measure.
6994784 Oh, merely relating to my personal headcanon. An in-joke of sorts that the good Admiral is privvy to.
I'm not sure if the odd spellings of names is simply because of her unfamiliarity with Human names but considering that my name is spelled Aric, I just wanted to say Thank You!
But who is Aric and when was he introduced? I can't seem to find him.
Yeah, if ponies speak their own language, then they're definitely not going to use Latin terminology for clouds. When Silver finally internalizes how little intentional control humanity has over the atmosphere, it is going to blow her mind.
Also, nice explanation for last chapter's foofaraw. Bureaucrats scrambling to cover all the bases after creativity and ignorance found a hole in the old regulations would certainly explain the desperate attempts to classify a living organism based on artificial aircraft standards.
Is it usual for colleges in the states to offer so few classes per semester? 'Cause twice de exact same day with just one day in beetween sound very redundant to me.
I really want to see her haul a cloud into class
Gender discrepancy?
6995542
Oops. Correction made, thank you!
6995598 no problem!
6994031 You say "planet-wide geoengineering" as if it's a problem...
wow i wonder how many airports would like to have pegasus ponys work for them to clear out fog or other bad weather that might come up from time to time hahaha.
Also the thing about making clouds with planes ...
6994501
That was a little bit TMI.
Still, I'm glad I can help pass the time.
6994505
Well, they certainly would have brought it up, since it's so much different for ponies. Certainly it would have been something that all the previous viewers would have noticed (the weather forecast said it was going to rain, but it didn't!).
Of course, covering it in orientation and then seeing it for yourself are two very different things.
6994532
That's totally going to be up to the whims of my readers. I plan on making a blog post about it this Saturday.
6994540
Oops. Correction made; thank you!
Count on it!
6994613
We've seen the deformation and the crashing through solid objects in canon (cartoon physics!), so both could be justified.
Of course I intend to take a more realistic view, and have them be as biologically accurate as is possible (given that pegasi can fly and unicorns can perform magic, some liberties have to be taken; as far as I know no real equines can do either). Which means that a midair collision between and airplane and a pegasus would not end well for either.
6994790
Could be a lot of things. I haven't thought of a specific thing.
The FAA is going to want to make sure that the rules are firmly established before any further incidents take place.
6994842
It's a name I've used before in various (non-pony) stories. His full name is Aric Louis Stevenson.
This is the first time he's showed up, so you won't have seen any previous mentions of him.
6994994
They're more likely to consider clouds very differently than we do. We named most of the clouds before we knew that much about the weather that came out of them (I'm guessing, but it's a reasonable guess), whereas the pegasi would be more interested in what came out of the cloud than how it looked in the sky, and would name them appropriately.
It only takes one highly-publicized incident to briefly motivate a government agency to Do Something to illustrate that they're on top of the problem. Sadly, as often or not, that Something turns out to not be the best solution in the long run.
6995116
No, it isn't common at all. At least, not as far as I know.
When I went to Kalamazoo College 20 years ago, they were on a quarters system, rather than semesters. Each quarter was ten weeks of classes, and a full courseload was three.
Most classes were either an hour long, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, or two hours long on Tuesday and Thursday.
That doesn't seem like a lot, but the way things worked was that you generally had a lot of out-of-class stuff going on, whether it be homework or labs or other activities that were related to your major (I was a theatre major, so besides my normal classload, I was expected to work in the scene shop and be involved in plays, which took up an enormous chunk of time.) There were also requirements for physical education classes which took place apart from that schedule (I took horseback riding and fencing), along with cultural requirements--I can't remember what it was called, but we had to attend a certain number of lectures, plays, concerts, and so on.
6995193
Of course she will. Once she gets past those pesky FAA regulations. Or. . . .
It's probably worth mentioning that Kalamazoo often got thick fogs, and as we all know, fog is just a very low cloud.
6995925
Well, it's something that we humans are experimenting with in a rather uncontrolled manner with no idea exactly what the end result might be.
6995984
That would be a good employment opportunity for pegasi. They could also probably help drought-stricken areas, although the benefits might be longer in coming.
Another very nice little chapter. Being a guy with a Linguistics-related degree, I find myself wondering what kind of language "Equestrian" would be. Tonal? Gendered nouns? SVO or SOV? Is it quite varied in sound or just a lot of different variations on the word "neigh?"
Also, she may be weirded out when she finds out that humans cannot, in fact, digest hay. And goodness knows how she'll take meeting a regular Earth horse (not to be confused with an Earth Pony).
See you next time, Admiral Biscuit!
6996961 Well, it sounds a lot like what I had here in Québec, except the schedule was more random and a few classes could go up to 3 or 4 hour.
6996910
I have to say, you're one of the most dedicated authors I've seen thus far on this site. Most of the comment section is filled with your replies to people. I have yet to see someone do something like that on this site.
Also, I'm going to follow you to keep up and see if you'll post that blog. I may even just stay followed to you afterwords, I have some respect for you because of the previous reason.
The main character is endearingly pony: Naive, upbeat, well-mannered. Child-like (well, the good ones).
*Alondro blinks and looks down at his half-finished can of Diet Hemlock Soda* Well shit...
Somepony forget about low ceilings indoors? I couldn't help but imagine her walking around upside down somehow to make that judgement.
"Pegasus one,Austin tower do you read,over"
"This is Pegasus one,I copy."
And as a bit of a lapsed pilot I could offer some help in that area if you need it.
Uh-oh. I hope that pegasus was fine.
7277019
I'm imagining something like this, except a pony instead of a seagull...
7002767
The naivety is largely because she's on Earth; as for the upbeat and well-mannered . . . that just seems to me like what the average pony would be like. They're more complex than that, of course, but at first glance they just give off that vibe.
7002955
Diet Hemlock? Son, if you're gonna poison yourself, do it right.
7010770
Could pegasi do that, I wonder? Because that would be very strange. Also ceilings generally aren't made for that kind of thing.
7277019
Just a few singed feathers, an unexpected tail-trimming, and some soiled underwear.
7338477
What would be a really interesting take on the PoE genre would be if cartoon physics applied to ponies . . . but nothing else. Probably not the kind of story I'd ever write, but it would be fun to read.
The part about the hemlock makes the narrator seem dumb. No professor would have left out WHY he drank it, so why does she think it was an accident or mistake?
7474555
It would depend on how the subject came up. The professor is unlikely to be concerned with how any particular philosopher died, so Silver Glow would have learned (indirectly) when a student asked something like "Wasn't Socrates the one who drank hemlock?" and the professor would have said "Yes," and then gone on with the lesson.
At least, as I recall, my philosophy teacher was more concerned with what the philosophers had to say, rather than how they lived and died.
As important as Socrates was he was also a pro-Sparta @$$hole who twice had students that over threw Athens Democracy to set them selves up as Oligarch Tyrants. Mostly he was a public nuisance and going by Plato's dialogs a lot of what he did was lead people down philosophical blind alleys then say the didn't know anything because they couldn't present argument that he couldn't tear to shreds.
But that has very, very little to do with this really great fic.
6994613
Well, regardless of how resilient they are faceplanting onto a granite mountainside, if he or she gets ingested by a jet engine, that pegasus is coming out a chunky red mist.
And everyone on the plane had better hope they have Captain Sculley at the controls.
7613426
It's interesting how some figures look in hindsight. I mean, in some ways (perhaps many ways) he set up the foundations of modern Western philosophy, and it's unlikely that Sparta would still be around these days even if he hadn't been there, so his lasting legacy is, I think, good. Even though at the time they might have been fully justified in having him drink the hemlock.
As I recall, didn't Pythagoras' friends take the guy who discovered irrational numbers out on a one-way ocean voyage?
7634092
Realistically, yes. Although I do want to write a silly one-shot where cartoon physics apply to the pony, so she just comes out the other end kind of scuffed up and the airplane goes down in flames.